


Spring Bells

by ladyoldstones



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Dark Daenerys, F/M, Fix-It, Fluff, post 8x05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2020-03-04 22:10:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18821755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyoldstones/pseuds/ladyoldstones
Summary: When Jon returns from war, it is in Sansa that he finds his refuge.





	Spring Bells

Sansa had heard the tales of the bells that rang out the morning of her birth. Her Lady Mother had told her time and time again, using them to remind her of her duties to her people: be gracious, be kind, be an inspiration. The bells were a sign of such inspiration. In the small sept where they hung high above rainbow-tinted windows, they had reflected the warmth of the dying summer sun. They rang out the Gods’ love, the Gods’ despair. 

Sansa had learned to hate them. In King’s Landing, the bells she’d once appreciated in her own home had taken on a new depth. A sound of darkness, edges far too sharp to be pleasant, the reflected light more akin to that of a blade than that of a glowing fire to keep her warm in the snow. 

When she heard what Daenerys had done to the people of the capitol, she wept. She wept for the innocent women and children who had their lives stolen in the cruelest way. She wept for the starving men who, under Robert’s rule, betrayed her own father only because they’d at least found some peace before Joffrey took up arms against them. She wept for the soldiers on all sides, for the boys they’d been and the men they’d been forced to become by their Queens.

Sansa looked from her needlework to where Jon lay in her chamber. His breathing was deep and slow, his slumber having finally taken him over after he’d wept with her. His own tears were those of fear, anger, shame, and countless other emotions he’d endured while under the rule of the Dragon Queen. He’d returned to her bloody and bruised, limping with an ache so deep in his bones he thought nothing would mend it. His men hadn’t wanted to stop running, so neither did he.

As soon as she laid eyes on him, she refused to let him leave her sight. She was not accustomed to her men returning from the South, let alone surviving such an ordeal more than once. To even consider such journeys to be ordeals before what Jon had seen seemed a dark and twisted joke to her now.

She’d taken Jon to her chambers, deciding to throw propriety out the window. It didn’t matter anymore. Jon was home, the Dragon Queen was dead. Jon didn’t tell Sansa how, and Sansa didn’t ask. It didn’t matter anymore. 

He’d nearly jumped out of his singed flesh when she lit the fire, desperate to help him beat the chill from his own skin with warmed bath water. It was then that he’d finally cracked, weeping like the Wall on a summer day.

And a wall he had been. He told her then, finally, all of it. The game he played, desperate to save the realms of men. Desperate to save his family. 

He wept and he wept and Sansa could do nothing but hold him, as desperate as he to allow the ghosts of war to fight their way out of his blood and bones. 

Jon had apologized profusely for covering her neck and gown in filth. Sansa simply pressed her lips to his forehead, her hand on the back of his neck, returning the gesture that had lived in her for so many nights.

It was only then that he allowed her to light the fire, to beat back the chill in her chambers. He let her help him to undress, the ache in his muscles inhibiting his movements. He’d questioned her several times if she was alright with this, helping him to bathe, seeing him.

“We’ve both been through hell, Jon. Different hells, to be sure, but this does not frighten me.” It was then he knew he’d found a comrade in her, truly. Their battles may be sorely opposed in context, but they’d survived what had been done to their bodies and what had been done to their minds.

“I’m sorry, Sansa,” he’d said later, as she poured water across his back with a pitcher. 

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” she said, laying a gentle hand on his shoulder as she took a cloth to the other. 

Jon turned, looking over his shoulder. “No, I do. I didn’t listen to you. I trusted you, I did, but… I was scared. I was scared when we took back Winterfell, and you saved us. I was scared when she came with her armies, and you knew the strife she would cause. I was scared when she marched on King’s Landing, and you were right that she’d be a queen of nothing but ashes. I didn’t listen. I wanted to prove that I could… I don’t even know. Just prove myself. To you. To all of you.”

Sansa breathed out his name as she grabbed his hand where it gripped the edge of the bath, knuckles purple and white. “You don’t have to prove anything to us. Least of all me. If you trust anything, trust in that. Trust in us.”

She’d said the words before she could think.  _ Us _ .

Jon looked at her as though something had finally struck him. A light peered through the darkness, a way to get through the nightmare that Daenerys had left behind in Jon’s heart as much as the people of King’s Landing.

He took a deep breath, steadying himself in her eyes, anchoring himself through the touch of her hand. “That would work. That would work very well, Sansa,” he said, sweeping his thumb over her knuckles.

Sansa felt her heart beat wildly. Politically, it was perfect. Together, she and Jon would have the support of all the kingdoms of Westeros. And intimately…

She’d never let herself believe it could be possible. Even after learning the truth about Jon, she didn’t let herself give in to the desires she tried so very hard to beat down. And now, he was offering it to her.

“It would work,” she agreed, smiling softly. She half hoped the blush on her cheeks could be passed off by the steam of the bath water, but she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted him to think that was the cause. 

Jon grasped her hand and pulled it to his lips, gently placing a kiss to the back of it. “Take some time to think about it. We have neither ice nor fire marching at our doors, and as such we have all the time in the world before us. So take your time. We are cousins, Sansa, and…” he trailed off, unable to meet her eyes any longer through the heat of his own embarrassment. The last thing he wanted to do was force her into another marriage, and he knew the beast that lay somewhere within him that wanted her would show in his eyes if he was not careful.

Sansa slipped a hand under Jon’s chin, pulling his eyes to hers. She leaned in and stopped only a hair’s breadth away. “I know.” Her breath was warm on his lips, and Jon knew then that this one small act would be allowed.

He closed what little space there was between them, gently pressing his lips to hers. Jon felt her pulse quicken in her wrist, the smallest gasp that came from between her parted lips like the first breath of a bird. He leaned his forehead against hers and smiled before he turned away and allowed her to finish bathing him. 

They’d laid together in her bed for some time before sleep finally overcame him, and so Sansa moved herself to the chair by the fire and watched him sleep, the safety of Winterfell surrounding them. The rise and fall of Jon’s chest soothed her, allowing her mind to return to her needlework. 

She knew then that, together, she and Jon would rebuild this world stone by stone, their love similar to that of her Lady Mother and Lord Father. And when the spring bells rang out to celebrate the birth of their children, and their children’s children, she knew that those who came after them would know the bells as nothing but the sound of glory. 


End file.
